The Week in History Nov. 20-26

Nov. 20

1620: Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay; he was the first child born of English parents in present-day New England.

1962: President John F. Kennedy held a news conference in which he announced the end of the naval quarantine of Cuba imposed during the missile crisis, and the signing of an executive order prohibiting discrimination in federal housing facilities.

1969: The Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phaseout.

1973: The DeForrest Starlite Café opened at the junction of Highways 12 and 281. Free coffee was served all day.

1998: The state B girls' basketball tournament was played in Aberdeen at Wachs Arena at Northern State University.

Nov. 21

1934: The Cole Porter musical ''Anything Goes,'' starring Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney, opened on Broadway.

1942: The Alaska Highway, also known as the Alcan Highway, was formally opened at Soldier's Summit in the Yukon Territory.

1973: President Richard Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

1992: The cost of a gallon of unleaded fuel in Aberdeen was 97 cents. Some station owners expected to see the price drop as low as 89 cents before the decline stops.

Nov. 22

1954: The Humane Society of the United States was incorporated as the National Humane Society.

1963: President John F. Kennedy was shot to death during a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, in the same open car as the president, was seriously wounded. A suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested.

1990: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announced her resignation.

1992: The Gettysburg School held “Switch Day” — the switch was parents attended school, and the kids stayed home.

2014: Authorities said Colter Richard Arbach, 22, of Sisseton shot and killed three people and wounded another before killing himself. The victims, all from Sisseton, were Vernon Renville Jr., 31; Candace Labelle, 29; and Angela Adams, 25. Wounded was Karissa Dogeagle, 22, also of Sisseton.

Nov. 23

1887: Actor Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in London.

1971: The People's Republic of China was seated in the U.N. Security Council.

1992: Country music star Roy Acuff died in Nashville at age 89.

2002: President George W. Bush visited Vilnius, Lithuania, and Bucharest, Romania, where he vowed to defend hard-won freedoms behind the former Iron Curtain.

2007: A Canadian cruise ship, the MS Explorer, struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began taking on water, but all 154 passengers and crew took to lifeboats and were plucked to safety by a passing cruise ship.

Nov. 24

1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection.

1865: Mississippi became the first Southern state to enact laws which came to be known as "Black Codes" aimed at limiting the rights of newly freed Blacks; other states of the former Confederacy soon followed.

1963: Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.

1971: A hijacker calling himself "Dan Cooper" (but who became popularly known as "D.B. Cooper") parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over the Pacific Northwest after receiving $200,000 in ransom; his fate remains unknown.

1974: The bone fragments of a 3.2 million-year-old hominid were discovered by scientists in Ethiopia; the skeletal remains were nicknamed "Lucy."

1987: Former Gov. Bill Janklow spoke at a graduation banquet for the Leadership Aberdeen class.

Nov. 25

1975: Koch's Chain Saw Service hung holiday decorations on Aberdeen's Main Street, including 90-pound angels and 50-pound stained-glass windows. The Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce was responsible for the decorations.

1982: On Thanksgiving Day, an arson fire broke out in downtown Minneapolis; the blaze destroyed an entire city block, but resulted in no injuries.

1986: The Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Ronald Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.

1992: The movie ''The Bodyguard,'' starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, was first released.

1999: Five-year-old Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida, setting off an international custody battle.

Nov. 26

1789: Nov. 26 was a day of thanksgiving set aside by President George Washington to observe the adoption of the Constitution of the United States.

1912: CBS newsman Eric Sevareid was born in Velva, N.D.

1942: The motion picture ''Casablanca,'' starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, had its world premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York.

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning Dec. 1.

1983: Aberdeen's new Wendy's, owned locally by Curt Fredrickson and Jim Koehler, was preparing to open. The restaurant would have 75 employees.

2014: After 30 years in Aberdeen, Videoland closed. It was the city's last brick-and-mortar, standalone video rental store.

This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: The Week in History Nov. 20-26